Love Is a Lot Like Physics

Poem

Love Is a Lot Like Physics


Love is a lot
like physics:
It takes study

to understand
how masses —
yours, his —

attract, how his body
heat conducts
and your heart rate

accelerates before
either has had time
to evaluate impact.

You think you get
principles of velocity,
assume his speed

at takeoff matches
yours. You fail to
account for force

or Newton's third
law of motion.
The outcome of that

one wrong electrical charge
leaves all the circuits
broken. You begin to

oscillate, fall from orbit,
finally calculate the variables
of just so much hot air.

Notes

Classroom Physics Tutorial

Radio station KPBX in Spokane, Washington, invited students of St. Andrews-Sewanee School, Sewanee, Tennessee, to select and read on the air (SAS owns and operates its own radio station, SASradio) poems with a science focus. In searching online for such poems, the students and their faculty sponsor came across my “Love Is a Lot Like Physics” and wrote to ask permission to read it on air. The poem was broa…